[Annoy] What's something small that really annoys you?

Forums › Off topic › [Annoy] What's something small that really annoys you?

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#3443124 12-Dec-2025 15:25

floydbloke:

Contractors at work (government department) moaning about being stood down for four weeks over the holiday period.

(I know what your daily/hourly rates are...suck it up buttercup.)

I've been a contractor since 1985. My current client's project has been running for three years and there's still a way to go. The client is worried about the wider project team getting burnt out and has declared a shutdown from 22 Dec to 4 Jan but has also said everyone needs to take another week off either directly before, after or a week after. They then thought that the contractors (about 1/2 of the project) wouldn't want to take such a long break due to loss of income and told us that they would pay the contractors for 5 days of time off over that period. Very generous of them I thought and a first for me.

I used to fully agree with the comment that unpaid leave, sick leave, training leave etc is covered in a contractor's hourly rate. That is not really the case now. Wage and salaries have risen much faster than contractor rates over the last decade or two over which time annual leave has risen to 4 weeks if not more and employees get subsidised KiwiSaver. There are very few tax advantages to contracting if you are an honest tax payer.

I don't contract because of any financial benefit and with my experience I could get about the same as an employee when you factor in the benefits.. I'm just too old and too used to working when I want to, for how long I want to. I just wouldn't want to go back to answering to an employment framework.

rb99

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#3443145 12-Dec-2025 18:04

Couriers who have your item loaded on the van for delivery at 11am, nothing happens and hey presto, it's magically waiting for a courier to pick it up for delivery at 5pm.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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Behodar

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#3443155 12-Dec-2025 18:35

That reminds me, I need to contact Amazon because I have a package that's simultaneously "arriving today" but "not yet shipped".

Edit: Well this is one for the Whiskey thread, because I contacted Amazon and got "Sorry for the inconvenience. Would you like me to cancel the order?" No, I would like you to ship the order!

Tinkerisk

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#3443216 12-Dec-2025 19:36

I had an experience with DHL. A large parcel was flagged as having arrived at a branch via the DHL app, and I was told I could pick it up there after another request. Well, nothing happened, so I checked three times during the week at the branch in question, but nothing. After a week, I received a message via the app saying that the parcel would now be returned because I hadn't picked it up.

I sent a screenshot of the history to DHL customer service by email. Three days later, I received a written apology. Great.

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Behodar

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#3444074 15-Dec-2025 08:15

iPhone apps that use notifications to send you advertising.
Apple for not enforcing "Do not use Apple Services to [...] send unsolicited messages [using] Push Notifications" and "Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges."

Handsomedan

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#3444162 15-Dec-2025 13:44

ACC and their inflexibility.

This is not the people that work there, but more the lack of ability for those people to provide the services that people need, despite them being available.

See: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=48&topicid=220105&page_no=451#3444157 for the good stuff.

Classic example: Needed to get my mother and father Meals on Wheels and transport to get to doctor, hairdresser, supermarkets and the like.
ACC can and does provide for this - to a point.

Meals on Wheels - pay as you go with no assistance (and yet once another agency became involved, they were able to subsidise Meals on Wheels)
Transport - my mother has broken her arm - she is unable to drive. My dad has Parkinson's and is also blind. He cannot drive.
- They need to get to the supermarket, doctor, hairdresser, podiatrist, hospital appointments, etc
- Taxi and bus are no good - Driving Miss Daisy (DMD) is the only real option as they provide specialist services
- This is covered - but only for very specific appointments
- In order to get approval for DMD you need the address of each establishment, the exact date and time you'll be going there and so on
- Supermarket is limited to one establishment only, despite the fact that two of them are very close to each other and my parents use both for different items
- An expectation is that the two incapacitated 86 year olds will do a single large shop either online or at one of the supermarkets in person each week.
- To get more than that, you need to jump through hoops - which I did on their behalf. They can now visit New world twice a week at their leisure for the next 6 weeks.
- The doctor didn't have a specific appointment, but wants a follow up "in a couple of weeks" - TBA. They now (after a lot of arguing) can go once, in the next 3 weeks.

How these two older humans, with their various ailments were supposed to navigate this minefield of dos and don'ts is beyond me. I spent a week sorting stuff out almost full time with the various agencies involved, but once it was all set up they're good to go. Could mum and dad have set this all in motion themselves? Absolutely no way.

It took one visit from a healthcare worker on my last day down there to get all of this even more sorted and consolidated than I was able to do in a week of calling, emailing and visiting.

Infuriating that the help is there, it's just so hard to get it.

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Eva888

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#3444276 15-Dec-2025 16:44

Had to rush from the Smile to the Annoy thread to get all the gen. Good that you posted this as a lot of people have no idea what is available. Kudos to the people that organise these situations. May we never need them.

deepred

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#3444280 15-Dec-2025 16:53

Handsomedan:

ACC and their inflexibility.

This is not the people that work there, but more the lack of ability for those people to provide the services that people need, despite them being available.

See: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=48&topicid=220105&page_no=451#3444157 for the good stuff.

Classic example: Needed to get my mother and father Meals on Wheels and transport to get to doctor, hairdresser, supermarkets and the like.
ACC can and does provide for this - to a point.

Meals on Wheels - pay as you go with no assistance (and yet once another agency became involved, they were able to subsidise Meals on Wheels)

Transport - my mother has broken her arm - she is unable to drive. My dad has Parkinson's and is also blind. He cannot drive.

They need to get to the supermarket, doctor, hairdresser, podiatrist, hospital appointments, etc
Taxi and bus are no good - Driving Miss Daisy (DMD) is the only real option as they provide specialist services
This is covered - but only for very specific appointments
In order to get approval for DMD you need the address of each establishment, the exact date and time you'll be going there and so on
Supermarket is limited to one establishment only, despite the fact that two of them are very close to each other and my parents use both for different items
An expectation is that the two incapacitated 86 year olds will do a single large shop either online or at one of the supermarkets in person each week.
To get more than that, you need to jump through hoops - which I did on their behalf. They can now visit New world twice a week at their leisure for the next 6 weeks.
The doctor didn't have a specific appointment, but wants a follow up "in a couple of weeks" - TBA. They now (after a lot of arguing) can go once, in the next 3 weeks.
How these two older humans, with their various ailments were supposed to navigate this minefield of dos and don'ts is beyond me. I spent a week sorting stuff out almost full time with the various agencies involved, but once it was all set up they're good to go. Could mum and dad have set this all in motion themselves? Absolutely no way.

It took one visit from a healthcare worker on my last day down there to get all of this even more sorted and consolidated than I was able to do in a week of calling, emailing and visiting.

Infuriating that the help is there, it's just so hard to get it.

It's starting to sound like the American health ~~system~~ industry. If there's a deliberate attempt to steer NZ towards it, lest we forget the infamous CHEs of the 1990s.

"I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." — J. Edgar Hoover

"Create a society that values material things above all else. Strip it of industry. Raise taxes for the poor and reduce them for the rich and for corporations. Prop up failed financial institutions with public money. Ask for more tax, while vastly reducing public services. Put adverts everywhere, regardless of people's ability to afford the things they advertise. Allow the cost of food and housing to eclipse people's ability to pay for them. Light blue touch paper." — Andrew Maxwell

gzt

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#3444388 15-Dec-2025 22:36

Cans that don't stack.

johno1234

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#3444451 16-Dec-2025 07:50

Searching on Bunnings/Mitre10 website. These guys are spending millions and millions on their IT and websites. Yet you cannot do a structured search e.g. for screw/stainless/timber/long thread/8g/20mm

And a free text search is barely better than random results.

richms

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#3444455 16-Dec-2025 08:01

I complained about that useless search ages back and some people defended it saying it was hard or something. Yeahso they don't do the work so I as a customer have to. Way to make me order elsewhere eh. Also the screw selection is dire and overpriced.

Richard rich.ms

johno1234

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#3444456 16-Dec-2025 08:09

richms:

I complained about that useless search ages back and some people defended it saying it was hard or something. Yeahso they don't do the work so I as a customer have to. Way to make me order elsewhere eh. Also the screw selection is dire and overpriced.

Agree. As soon as you go out of bulk 1000 screw boxes the price skyrockets. However there's usually one or other of B or M10 nearby but to find a proper retailer of all things fixings I always have to trek all the way across to somewhere like East Tamaki or Otahuhu.

I just want to fix some spouting brackets, stainless Robertson 6g x 20mm long thread. Do they need to be "self drilling" tips to just drive them directly into a pine fascia?

freitasm

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#3444465 16-Dec-2025 08:24

Companies that spend thousands of dollars on campaign, including advertising, landing pages and whitepaper creation to have the whole thing destroyed because their landing page does not give you the promised whitepaper as soon as the form is submitted, and the email you'd expect to arrive with the link to said whitepaper doesn't arrive.

The fact tis is a tech company, selling the wonders of AI-powered DevOps tells me they probably had someone in their marketing department vibe coding the whole landing page/email/download workflow thing and never bothered ensuring it works, thus negating the whole DevOps thing.

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geoffwnz

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#3444468 16-Dec-2025 08:30

johno1234:

richms:

I complained about that useless search ages back and some people defended it saying it was hard or something. Yeahso they don't do the work so I as a customer have to. Way to make me order elsewhere eh. Also the screw selection is dire and overpriced.

Agree. As soon as you go out of bulk 1000 screw boxes the price skyrockets. However there's usually one or other of B or M10 nearby but to find a proper retailer of all things fixings I always have to trek all the way across to somewhere like East Tamaki or Otahuhu.

I just want to fix some spouting brackets, stainless Robertson 6g x 20mm long thread. Do they need to be "self drilling" tips to just drive them directly into a pine fascia?

They don't need to be self drilling as there's a handy device that can provide a suitable size hole prior to installing the screw. ;-)

MotorDrive Rallying

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#3444480 16-Dec-2025 09:33

I doubt that pine would need a pilot hole. Do they need to be 6G? That would likely end up being Robertson #1. Long thread in a wood screw is likely to be countersunk head hinge screw. Pan head long thread likely to be self tapping sheet metal screw.

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